Sit or stand, it's your choice

There's a new desk on the market, though it's a bit smarter than your average contraption. Called the Stir Kinect Desk M1, it sports built-in electronics and a motorized platform that rises up and down to keep you from sitting on your rump all day long. Unless of course you'd prefer to sit for hours on end, then it will dutifully stay in place. Otherwise, there's some interesting functionality to play with.

Making the case for 4TB hard drives

It was a year ago that cloud backup firm Backblaze revealed some interesting data it had collected in regards to hard drive failure rates. For a number of reasons, trying to analyze the reliability of hard drive brands and models can be complicated, though when the dust settled, Backblaze determined that Hitachi brand HDDs were the best. With another year of operation under its belt, Backblaze has more data to share, though Hitachi remains a solid option.

There's a PC in the belly of this rodent

Forget about building a better mouse trap, what about a better mouse? Or to take it a step further, a mouse that doubles as a full fledged PC? While not yet a shipping product, the idea of integrating an entire PC into a mouse has been achieved -- Meet the Mouse-Box, a mouse and computer rolled into one. You can use it as a standard mouse or as a working PC (just add a monitor), or both.

Durable design for students

Acer today added to its Chromebook family with the launch of two new models, the 15.6-inch Acer Chromebook C910 and 11.6-inch Acer Chromebook C740. Though they differ in size, both new Chromebooks feature durable design qualities that make them better suited for school environments. It starts with using reinforced covers that can withstand up to 60kg of force, Acer says.

Rumor has it the Radeon R9 380X will feature 4,096 GCN cores

Keeping in mind that nothing is ever official until it's official (one of the many mottos of Captain Obvious), purported details of AMD's forthcoming Radeon R9 380X have started to emerge. If they turn out to be accurate, you can expect the Radeon R9 380X to arrive sometime between April and June of this year with 4,096 GCN cores in tow, along with 4GB of 3D stacked High Bandwidth Memory (HDM).

Intel is confident its relationship with Apple remains strong

There's a rumor going around saying that Apple is looking long and hard at ARM's A-Series chipsets for use in future Mac releases. While it wouldn't be the end of the world for Intel to lose Apple as a client, especially coming fresh off its best year ever, Intel would certainly like to keep that relationship alive. And it probably will -- Intel CEO Brian Krzanich says the rumors of Apple switching to ARM are just that.

Google Glass project has a new chief

There are a couple of big changes to the Google Glass project that are taking place, the first of which is that it's now being overseen Tony Fadell, a former Apple executive and founder of Nest, which Google purchased for $3.2 billion a year ago. Ivy Ross will still run the daily operations, she'll just now report to Fadell. And the second? You can kiss the Explorer program goodbye -- Google has decided to shutter its Glass Explorer program as it moves into the next phase.

Maxwell unchained

What better way to end the work week than by spying a glimpse of the real-deal Maxwell part we've all been waiting for? Winning the lottery? Okay, you got us on that one, but this is a cool (not close) second. Assuming the pictures making the rounds in cyberspace are real, you can take a look at Nvidia's forthcoming GM200-400-A1 GPU nestled into an engineering board (180-1G600-1102-A04).

A series of 'misstpes'

Any nerd over the age of twenty can probably remember a time he or she would frequent the local RadioShack. It was the go-to shop for electronics and geek fare, though we're talking a lifetime ago in tech years. Fast forward to today and there are reports that RadioShack is headed for a bankruptcy filing, perhaps as early as the first week of February. Sadly, we can't say we're surprised.

This is one plank you won't mind walking

When it comes to keyboards, there are two types: mechanical planks and everything else. I can say that with complete confidence after having gone through and used or otherwise tested a number of keyboards over the years -- for the most part, squishy membrane keyboards just don't compete (though the Mad Catz S.T.R.I.K.E. 3 is a valiant effort). In case you're interested, my daily driver these days is a Das Keyboard 4 Professional, which you can pick up today in factory reconditioned form for $120.